25. Neither is force converted into inertness (i.e. the spirit never becomes matter), from the indestructibility of their nature, and whenever the spiritual is seen or considered as the material, it becomes a duality, and there is no unity in this view of the two. (Hence there is no union or entire assimilation either of the spirituals or materials).
26. Thus men being under the influence of their desires, and beset by their vanities of various kinds (altogether) are going on downward still, as a stone torn from the head of a cliff, falls from precipice to precipice headlong to the ground.
27. Men are as straws carried here and there by the current of their desire, and whirled about in its eddy; they are overtaken by and overwhelmed in an endless series of difficulties which <are> impossible for me to enumerate. (The Sanskrit na párjate is the Bengali párájáyaná).
28. Men being cast like a ball flung from the palm of fate, are hurried onward by their ardent desires till they are hurled headlong into the depth of hell; where being worried and worn out with hell torments, they take other forms and shapes after lapses of long periods (to undergo fresh toils and troubles on earth).
CHAPTER XXVI.
Manki’s Attainment of Final Extinction or Nirvána.
Argument:—The vanity of Human wishes, and the Tranquility of Rational and spiritual speculation.
Vasishtha said:—Thus the living soul, being let fall in the mazy path of his world, is encompassed by calamities and accidents as countless as the animalcules, which are generated in the rainy season.
2. All these accidents though unconnected with one another, follow yet so fast and closely upon each other, as the detached stone lying scattered and close together in the rocky desert, and linked in a lengthening chain of thought in the mind of man.
3. The mind blinded of its reason, becomes a wilderness overgrown with the arbour of its calamities, and yet appearing to be smiling as a vernal grove before men, by its feigned merriment and good humour. (Mirth and sorrow are both of them the effects of unreasonableness).
4. O how pitiable are all those beings! Who being bound to their subjection to hope, are subjected to divers states of pain and pleasure, in their repeated births in various forms on earth.